Glass-based articles can be made in large sheets. Large sheets may be advantageous for use in large applications (e.g., displays), but often desired piece parts are smaller in size than what the sheets that they are manufactured in. Conventional work arounds include processing large sheets with one of the last steps implemented being to take the large (mother) sheet and separate out all the individual parts. In other words, in the individual parts are manufactured in a serial manner rather than in parallel.
Often, the separation of the individual parts is accomplished through mechanical dicing. However, mechanical dicing may have several disadvantages including: a highly serial nature which may be slow, a speed dependency which is a function of thickness of substrate, multiple passes, restrictions on dicing geometry, weakened dicing edges and/or low yield.
Further, glass parts may have features which are created via an etch step. Etching may provide for the creation of features in the part such as holes or slots, cleaning the part, enhancing strength, or creating a surface texture, but may interfere or be hampered by dicing.